Pi-hole: The Ultimate Ad Blocker for Your Network

In the age of digital advertising, users are constantly bombarded by unwanted ads while browsing websites, using apps, or streaming content. While browser-based ad blockers can help reduce this annoyance, they only function on individual devices. Pi-hole offers a more comprehensive solution—one that works across an entire network.

Pi-hole is a network-wide ad blocker that intercepts and blocks advertisements, trackers, and malicious domains at the DNS (Domain Name System) level. Whether you’re surfing the web, watching YouTube videos, or playing games, Pi-hole ensures that unwanted content is filtered out before it reaches your devices.

What is Pi-hole?

Pi-hole is a free, open-source software that acts as a DNS sinkhole. It effectively prevents devices on your network from reaching known ad servers by rerouting requests to an internal server instead of the actual destination. Originally designed to run on a Raspberry Pi single-board computer, Pi-hole can now be installed on a variety of platforms, including virtual machines, Docker, and even cloud servers.

The key difference between Pi-hole and traditional ad blockers lies in its network-wide functionality. While most ad blockers operate on a per-device basis, Pi-hole works by filtering traffic for all devices on your network at the DNS level. This means that once set up, all devices connected to your network—smartphones, computers, smart TVs, and even IoT devices—will be protected from intrusive ads.

How Pi-hole Works

Pi-hole functions as a local DNS server. DNS is essentially the phonebook of the internet, translating human-readable domain names like example.com into IP addresses that computers use to identify each other. When you visit a website, your device sends a request to a DNS server to resolve the domain name to its corresponding IP address. Pi-hole intercepts these requests and checks whether the domain is known to serve ads or malicious content.

• Blocking Ads: When a request for a known ad server is made, Pi-hole responds with a blank or “null” address (like 0.0.0.0), meaning the request never reaches the ad server.
• Tracking Protection: In addition to blocking ads, Pi-hole also blocks tracking domains that collect user data for advertising purposes.
• Custom Lists: Users can customize Pi-hole by adding or removing domains to block, tailoring the filtering process to their needs.

Key Features of Pi-hole

• Network-Wide Ad Blocking: Pi-hole provides a single point of ad blocking for all devices on your network, without the need for individual ad blockers or browser extensions.
• Real-Time Analytics: Pi-hole offers a user-friendly web dashboard where you can monitor the activity on your network, view which domains are being queried, and see how many ads are being blocked in real time.
• Customizable Blacklists and Whitelists: Users can choose to block specific domains or allow certain domains through using blacklists and whitelists, providing a high degree of control.
• Lightweight and Efficient: Pi-hole is designed to be lightweight and efficient. It uses minimal system resources, even on low-powered devices like the Raspberry Pi.
• Pi-hole as a DHCP Server: If you want Pi-hole to manage all network traffic, you can configure it as a DHCP server. This will allow Pi-hole to assign IP addresses to devices on your network while simultaneously routing all DNS requests through it.
• Enhanced Security: By blocking access to known malicious or phishing domains, Pi-hole helps protect devices on your network from harmful content that could compromise security or privacy.

Setting Up Pi-hole

Prerequisites

Pi-hole is very lightweight and does not require much processing power

• Min. 2GB free space, 4GB recommended
• 512MB RAM

The following operating systems are officially supported:

• Raspberry Pi OS (formerly Raspbian)
• Armbian OS
• Ubuntu
• Debian
• Fedora
• CentOS Stream

Setting the Static ip address

Before installing Pi-hole on your device, it’s important to configure a static IP address for the device. If you’re using Network Manager, you can set a static IP by running the following commands:

# This will list all network interfaces and their status. Look for your active network interface (Ethernet or Wi-Fi).
nmcli device

# To set the static ip address run the following commoand 
sudo nmcli connection modify <connection-name> ipv4.addresses <static-ip>/<subnet-mask> ipv4.gateway <gateway-ip> ipv4.dns <dns-ip> ipv4.method manual

# Once you've made the changes, restart the network connection for the settings to take effect:
sudo nmcli connection down <connection-name> && sudo nmcli connection up <connection-name>


# Example 
sudo nmcli connection modify "Wired connection 1" ipv4.addresses 192.168.1.100/24 ipv4.gateway 192.168.1.1 ipv4.dns 8.8.8.8 ipv4.method manual

sudo nmcli connection down "Wired connection 1" && sudo nmcli connection up "Wired connection 1"

Setting up Pi-hole is straightforward and can be done in a few steps. Below is a general outline of the installation process:

• Prepare Your Hardware: While Pi-hole was originally designed for the Raspberry Pi, it can be installed on many different platforms, such as Linux, Docker, and even in virtual environments like VirtualBox. You’ll need a device with a static IP address to act as your Pi-hole server.
• Install Pi-hole: The easiest way to install Pi-hole is to use the official installation script. This can be done by entering a single command in the terminal:

# using curl
curl -sSL https://install.pi-hole.net | bash

# using wget 
wget -O basic-install.sh https://install.pi-hole.net
sudo bash basic-install.sh

Configure DNS Settings: During installation, Pi-hole will ask for some basic settings, such as your upstream DNS provider (Google DNS, OpenDNS, etc.). You can also configure whether to use Pi-hole as your DHCP server.

Access Pihole web-ui

Once the containers are up and running, you can access your Pihole web-gui instance by navigating to:

http://<your-server-ip>/admin

Reset password

If you’ve forgotten your Pi-hole admin password and need to reset it, you can do so easily via the command line on your Raspberry Pi or the device running Pi-hole. Here’s how to reset the password:

Log in to the Raspberry Pi (or the device where Pi-hole is installed) via SSH or directly using a terminal and run the following command

pihole -a -p

Conclusion

Pi-hole is a powerful, network-wide ad blocker that provides a significant improvement over traditional browser-based ad blockers. By filtering traffic at the DNS level, Pi-hole ensures that unwanted content, such as ads and trackers, is blocked for all devices connected to your network. It’s easy to set up, highly customizable, and can drastically improve the browsing experience for users. Whether you want to reduce the number of ads on your devices, improve your network security, or protect your privacy, Pi-hole is a must-have tool for any home network.